Chicago just added another food delivery startup to its plate.
Meet Eat Purely, a six-month-old company that’s taking a new approach to on-demand dinners. With a delivery zone of about 20 Chicago neighborhoods, Eat Purely says it promises to deliver healthy, organic meals in 20 minutes or less.
“If you can imagine a world where you can get healthy, delicious, organic meals delivered almost anytime, and almost instantly — that's the world we’re trying to create,” said Jeremiah Green, one of the company’s co-founders.
To be sure, there’s not exactly a dearth of on-demand food delivery options in Chicago. But Green said their take on the model sets them apart. Like some of its competitors, Eat Purely punctuates its service with a focus on healthy options, including 100 percent organic recipes that shy away from ingredients like butter and cream. Their menu features about five meal options a day, with prices ranging from $7 to $12 per meal. Orders can be placed in real time or up to a week in advance, with a delivery window between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The vertically-integrated company handles all aspects of the food preparation cycle, from ingredient selection and ordering to recipe writing and cooking — to ensure that the foundation of their menu is nutrition.
But the real kicker? All of their food is delivered cold.
“That’s important because food that has not been sitting hot for a while retains not only its nutritional value but also its flavor profile,” Green said. “We cook [food] to the perfect temperature and deliver it cold, so we’re able to make and deliver food other folks simply can’t. I can deliver you a medium rare hanger steak, where if I were to serve that hot it would probably overcook.”
They even have a contingency plan for novice chefs whose cooking skills may not be sophisticated enough to bring meals back up to restaurant standards.
“We test everything in the microwave to ensure that even at the worst case scenario, it's still at its best,” Green said, adding that some of the menu options are meant to be consumed cold.
What’s more, Green said the food-delivery landscape pales in comparison with other tech-savvy markets on either coast.
“I think that Chicago is grossly underserviced, and I think that’s why we have such a nice opportunity here,” he said, referencing competitor Sprig’s recent departure from the city and emphasizing the company’s underlying differences from other, more well-known food delivery companies like Grubhub and Blue Apron.
If the company's growth is any indication, Green's point may well be proven. Since its launch in March, Eat Purely has ballooned to a team of more than 50 employees (including culinary, logistics, tech and marketing), a growth underscored by a surge in overall business and an expansion from two to 20 Chicago neighborhoods.
Green said Eat Purely is expected to launch its lunch services sometime next month.
Image via Eat Purely.
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